


All On a Summer's Day

by Alchemine



Category: The Tempest - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alchemine/pseuds/Alchemine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The things parents do for their children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All On a Summer's Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chelseagirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelseagirl/gifts).



“What’s this?”

“An alembic.” Prospero marked the place in his book with an ink-stained finger and leant over to move the glass apparatus firmly out of his daughter’s reach.

“And what’s this?”

“A sextant.”

“What does it do?”

“Helps sailors find their way. Leave it be, come sit here and hold your doll—“

Miranda came obediently, dragging the unfortunate doll by one rag arm, and leant against her father’s knees. “When will you be finished reading?”

“By and by.” Prospero dipped his pen and made a note. Seeing that his attention was not forthcoming, Miranda plumped down at his feet—sitting on the hem of his robe in the process—and made a long, unsuccessful attempt to tie her shoelace. Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed, with no sound but the turning of pages and the soft, endless whisper of wind and waves through the window, before she dared try again.

“Papa—“

"Hm?” The magician glanced down, frowning, but stopped and smiled instead at the sight of Miranda’s hopeful, upturned face, with the neat plait he had made that morning unravelling in a cloud of pale wisps all around it. She had been as patient as a child could, had she not? But he had such a lot of work to do, and so…

“Here, my darling, I’ve a pretty toy for you.” Prospero thumped the gnarled butt of his staff on the floor, and a long stream of butterflies burst from its tip in a whirling, fluttering confusion of golden wings. They seemed to fill the whole room for a moment before they settled in a cloud around Miranda’s head and shoulders.

“Oh!” The little girl’s eyes went wide. “I can play with them?”

“Yes, yes. Look! They want to explore the island; follow and see where they go.” Encouraged by another thump of the staff, the butterflies poured out through the open door into the cool grey afternoon, and Miranda ran after them, the small red soles of her shoes pattering against the earth. Before her laughter had faded away, Prospero’s pointed nose was back between the leaves of his book.

“Ariel,” he said without looking up.

“I am here, my master.”

“Mind my daughter; see that no harm comes to her.”

“It shall be as you wish.”

The spirit departed, and from the shadows around the door, another, strangely shaped shadow detached itself and followed.

\---

While her father burrowed, mole-like, into his studies, Miranda wandered in pursuit of her butterflies, utterly heedless of her surroundings. In two years on the island, she had grown secure in the knowledge that gentle, invisible hands would stop her from tumbling over cliffs, pluck her out of pools of brackish water, and steer her away from poisonous berries. Because she could remember nothing else, she never questioned this state of affairs and assumed that all children had unseen guardians to keep them safe.

She followed the butterflies down to the beach, where she stopped a while to make towers of stones and shells, and while she was there the tide stopped too, held back in a broad semicircle all around her. When she lost interest in her towers, she left them for the waves to take and ran on, into the wooded part of the island, still able to catch a glimpse or two of the butterflies far ahead. She did not notice the cloven and blackened pine tree standing all on its own among oaks, but Ariel, easily keeping pace with her, had such a shock that he nearly missed the hunched figure scuttling behind it as they passed.

Human expressions were not a feature of Ariel’s face, but if he could have scowled, he would have. His master trusted Caliban well enough, at least as one might trust a tamed wild animal, but Ariel thought no good could ever come from any witch-spawn, and he did not like the creature trailing after his master’s child. But Caliban kept his distance, pacing them through the trees without trying to approach, and so Ariel ignored him and followed his little charge onward.

They passed out of the wood and into a vast field of sea-grass on a high bluff that overlooked the waves, and there Miranda finally grew weary and lay down, all but disappearing in the waist-high lushness. The butterflies, seeming to realise the chase was over, circled and returned to her, each one perching at the end of a single swaying blade. Ariel drifted close and saw that the child was half asleep already. While he stood guard over her, he sang a little song of his own devising, in a high sweet voice that mingled with the endless sighing of the wind.

_Earth and air and wave and flame_  
_Tree and bird and sea and sky_  
_I was here before you came  
_ _I must watch as you pass by_

“So you must indeed,” Prospero said at Ariel’s side. “How does my child?”

“Sleeping, my lord. She has walked far and done much.”

“You have protected her well, I see; not a scrape or scratch. Well done.”

Ariel inclined his head in acknowledgement of the praise. “I am pleased to have pleased you. But—there is something. We have been followed.”

"Followed?”

“By Caliban, master. He was alongside us from the time we left your cell, keeping just out of sight.”

“Caliban!” Miranda stirred in her sleep at the sound of her father’s raised voice, and he pitched the next call lower so as not to wake her. “Caliban, show yourself.”

The grass rustled to one side, and Caliban’s twisted form rose from it, in a half-guilty, half-sullen attitude.

“Here I am, you needn’t shout.”

Prospero frowned at him. “Why have you been creeping about, following my child in secret? I thought I had taught you to behave like a civilised person as well as to speak like one.”

“Oh, you have, my lord, you have,” Caliban said. “I meant no wrong. It is only that I saw you make the butterflies for my young lady, and—when I was young, here on the island, my dam Sycorax would sometimes work enchantments to entertain me as well, and I was put in mind of those times and thought to relive them by following and watching.”

Prospero snorted. “That hell-hag! I can only imagine what sort of enchantments she would make.”

An indescribable expression crossed Caliban’s face. “Indeed, they were spells of a…a darker sort. But they were pleasing to my childish eye, not least because my mother had made them for love of me.”

“Love! I think not. Such a creature cannot love, Caliban. What magic she did, she did for evil alone.”

“You were not there. You do not know.” Caliban’s long-nailed hands clenched into fists at his sides, and drops of blood fell on the long, bleached grass. “She was a witch, and I am a monster, but she loved me in her way.”

He turned and stumbled away toward the trees, and the abruptness of his leaving startled the butterflies into sudden flight. Irritably, Prospero clapped his hands and they vanished.

“Is it so, Ariel?” he asked as they watched Caliban go. “Did Sycorax love her spawn? I would not have thought such a thing could be.”

Ariel made a sinuous shrugging motion, a human gesture he had learnt by watching his master. “I saw nothing but cruelty and wickedness in her, but I was her slave, not her child. Who can say?”

“Strange,” Prospero said. He bent over and scooped Miranda into his arms; she murmured something, but did not wake. “Well, it does not matter now. Come, my Ariel, let’s away.”

Carrying the sleeping girl, and followed by Ariel, he set off for his cell under the dove-grey sky. 


End file.
